by Michele Hauf
The man shook his head. “I don’t have a name.”
“Tell me what he looked like,” Bron asked.
“I’m only allowed to give answers to the right questions.”
Bron swore under his breath and stepped back, protecting Kizzy with his stance. He shook the box gently. “Can you tell me what is in the box?”
The man shook his head.
“Ask him what gave it to him?” she said over Bron’s shoulder.
“The soul bringer,” the man answered rotely.
“You asked the right question,” Bron said as he pulled the twine from the box.
It fell away, and Kizzy collected it before it hit the floor. The box was topped with a cover that Bron could simply lift up and off, but at his heavy sigh she sensed he’d rather not.
“Is this dangerous?” he asked.
The guy didn’t answer.
“What does it smell like?” she asked, now noticing a definite distasteful odor.
“Blood,” he said.
“Then it can’t be a bomb.” He turned a questioning look on her. She shrugged. “I’m nervous. And that guy is creeping me out. Why are his eyes like that?”
“Apparently the soul bringer has bespelled him to his bidding. When he walks away from here he’ll likely forget everything. Will you be set free once I’ve opened the box?” he asked the man.
“Yes.”
“Just open it,” she encouraged and clutched Bron’s arm. “If it was dangerous he’d be running, yes?”
“Or that could be a means for the soul bringer to clean up loose ends.”
“No, it’s okay,” she said. “I mean, I have a feeling it’s not going to explode. He wants my heart in one piece, right? Hold it out and I’ll take the top off.”
He clutched the box to his gut, eyed the delivery boy, then nodded. “Fine. But be slow. Careful.”
Wishing she dared to take a photo, Kizzy let her camera hang at her chest as she went for the box top. She was scared, excited, freaked and—her girl gene that loved to open gifts felt as if it was Christmastime. Carefully she lifted the box lid with her free hand. Underneath, folded red tissue paper concealed the contents. On top of the tissue lay a white card with one word on it.
“Trade?” Bron read the word. It had been followed by a question mark. “Trade for—ah.”
“My heart?” she guessed. “You think?”
“Let’s see what he has to offer.”
“Wait.” She grasped his hand before he could fold back the tissue paper. “You wouldn’t really trade my heart, would you?”
He shook his head. “Never.”
Spoken without pause and with a truth she could read in his eyes. He had her back. She could trust him. She relented, and he pulled open the tissue to reveal...
Bron swore and reacted, gripping the delivery boy’s throat with his free hand and shoving him against the threshold. “What is this about?”
“I don’t have that answer,” he squeaked out. “Wrong question. Can I go now?”
“You’re not the one asking the questions. I am,” Bron growled.
“What is it?” Kizzy asked.
“Give me the cover.”
“I want to see what it is.”
“You shouldn’t.” But when she clutched the cover to her chest he met her gaze and relented, holding out the box.
Kizzy pushed aside the red tissue. Now she could smell the meaty odor, and it looked like a piece of meat, actually. Then she really looked at it. “OhmyGod. It’s a heart.”
Bron grabbed the cover from her and put it on the box. “Give this back to your master.” He shoved it toward the delivery boy.
“I’m not allowed to leave until the gift has been accepted.”
“I don’t accept it!”
“Just say you do and let him go. He’s being controlled,” Kizzy said. “We’ll figure this out.”
“It’s a poor joke,” Bron muttered. “Very well, I accept it. Go!”
The delivery boy nodded, and just as he turned, Kizzy said, “Wait! Whose heart is this?”
“I have that answer. It belongs to Claire Everhart.” With that, the guy made a quick exit, running down the stairs.
Bron stumbled and landed a shoulder against the wall. He stared at the box held between his bracketed hands as if it really would explode. “No.”
“Who is—wait. Claire is—” Kizzy quickly put two and two together. “You said you hadn’t seen your wife since you were banished. Claire was her name, right?”
“Yes,” he hissed and sank to his knees beside her.
Chapter 16
Bron clutched the black box with the cover on top of it to his chest. He didn’t know what to do, how to feel, what to believe. His mouth was dry. His skin felt clammy. Did his heart even beat?
How could it be his wife’s heart? He hadn’t seen Claire since the nineteenth century. Though he’d occasionally wondered if the legalities of such an absence negated their marriage vows over time. He had never hated her. Had genuinely cared for her. And even when he had hurt her by having an affair with another woman and she had screamed vile words at him, he still respected her.
And then he’d moved beyond that part of his life. Since that first assignment for Acquisitions he had always focused on his work and rarely looked back, save to mourn Isabelle’s cruel demise.
And now the soul bringer would threaten him with this. What was this? He had no proof the bloody organ inside the box was Claire’s heart.
It didn’t matter. It was someone’s heart. But why would the soul bringer take a stab at him in such a personal manner when it was Kizzy’s heart the bastard apparently wanted?
Perhaps the soul bringer believed Bron would actually trade Kizzy’s heart for...what? His wife was now dead. Bloody hell, he held her heart in a box! There was nothing on the earth he could imagine that would be worthy of a trade for Kizzy’s heart.
The gentle glide of Kizzy’s hand down his shoulder startled him to the present moment. “Talk to me,” she said softly.
Coming back to reality, he looked left and right. He sat in the hallway against the wall of her apartment. The front door was still open. Twilight darkened the air and shadowed his lover’s face. But he saw the question in her eyes, more so than worry or fear. She needed him to stand up and be the protector.
“We can’t stay here. He’ll find you.” He stood and, with the box under an arm, stepped toward the threshold.
“Bron, no matter where we go, they seem to find us. How can we possibly hide?”
Soft brown eyes entreated him. She was right. The Nightcat had spies everywhere, capable of communicating in real time via Twitter. And apparently, the soul bringer had his own means to flush them out.
Bron had no supernatural methods to fend off such devious observation. He possessed no magic. His only strength was in his physicality and his claws. But perhaps there was a spell that could hide Kizzy from those who had a fix on her heart? Why hadn’t he considered that earlier? He knew a handful of witches. And he did know a witch who lived in the area.
He clutched the box tighter, and his eyes fell to Kizzy’s chest. He wasn’t willing to rip out her heart and hand it over to the soul bringer to bring this to an end.
Yet he’d been charged to finish the mission. And he’d never before disobeyed an order.
Hell. He didn’t know what to do. He held his wife’s heart? The woman he was starting to care about possessed a heart that a vicious soul bringer sought?
And where was his heart?
Bron had never thought he had the capacity to care since Isabelle had been cast out into the winter night and left to die. What a horrible way to die, alone, and without her father’s protection. He’d not shielded her. The only reason she h
ad walked the earth was because of his indiscretion. Yet he had loved her the moment she had been born. Had tried to see her often, even though his love for her mother had faded, and she, a human woman, had turned vindictive against him because she had wanted his love so desperately. He should have protected Isabelle. He should have been a better man.
He was incapable of using his heart for good, of loving.
“Whatever is going on in there—” Kizzy tapped his temple “—has to wait. There’s something clawing at the living room window.” She bent to grab her backpack, stuffed with her clothes and the laptop. “And it has wings.”
He rushed down the hallway and into the living room. Another harpie? Since when were harpies so abundant in the mortal realm? Faery was their native habitat. Dark or malefic magic might conjure them to another realm. Or something even more powerful? They had to have been summoned by the soul bringer.
“Is there another way out of this building?” he asked, turning to stride to the front door again.
“There’s a back courtyard.”
Bron backtracked into the kitchen and pulled open a narrow drawer by the stove. He grabbed a large chopping knife and handed it to Kizzy. “You’ll need this.” He tugged out the bowie knife from his boot and grabbed her hand. “Let’s go.”
“I’m right behind you.”
* * *
“Siri, find the closest witch!” Bron commanded his phone as he slipped alongside Kizzy’s building, his eyes to the sky for the harpie.
“Really? Siri is in on the whole paranormal thing?”
“I have names categorized by species in my contacts.”
“Remind me to scroll through your contacts some time. What a trip!”
The phone dinged, and Siri announced the nearest witch was an hour and a half away near Lengby.
“Excellent.” Bron shoved the phone in a pocket. “I know that witch.”
“Is that so? Right, you mentioned you were familiar with the area. Old girlfriend?”
No time to explain. He still carried the box with the heart in it. Not what he wanted to have in hand, but he certainly couldn’t leave it in Kizzy’s apartment. Or toss it to be found by a garbage man. The police would have a field day over such a find. He had to dispose of it. And—if it truly was Claire’s heart—say goodbye.
When there was time.
Overhead a shadow swept through the night sky and circled as if a vulture stalking dying prey. He pulled out the bowie knife and nodded that Kizzy stay behind him. When the harpie swooped down into the alleyway, he ran toward it.
* * *
Kizzy didn’t want in on the harpie action, so she clung to the brick wall and kept an eye out for passersby who might witness the man engaged in a knife-against-talon battle with a winged creature. She desperately gripped the kitchen knife, praying she wouldn’t have to use it to protect herself in something so terrifying as hand-to-hand combat. How did the paranormals do it? Exist amongst the humans without discovery? No wonder Bron was so closed off. It was a self-protection instinct.
A slash of talon was countered with a stab of the blade into the birdman’s underbelly. Blood spilled out, but it was too dark for Kizzy to see what color it was. She gripped her camera—when a commotion behind a big blue garbage container averted her attention. She swung around, the knife thrust out before her.
A black cat peeked at her from behind one of the dumpster wheels. Its gold eyes took her in—with intent.
“That’s weird,” Kizzy said. “Cat’s aren’t usually so concerned with humans.” In fact, she’d expect the thing, if it were feral, to dash off at first sign of a human.
It was still looking at her, dividing its attention between her and the harpie fight, which she hoped Bron was winning. But now curiosity nudged her to creep toward the cat. Could it be?
“Here, kitty, kitty. I’m not going to hurt you.” She would never harm an animal; but she wasn’t about to abandon the knife.
The feline meowed and darted down a narrow aisle between two brick buildings. It paused and looked back at her. Another odd cat move. She’d had a cat when she was a teenager. Felines were the kings of selfish entitlement. They could care less what humans did.
With a leap, it tried to climb up the stack of wood pallets that blocked the aisle. Its claws took it up halfway, then it slipped.
Kizzy lunged for the animal and slipped her hand about its belly. Expecting a vicious swing of claws, she dropped the knife and gripped its forelegs together with one hand, holding it securely against her gut.
“I think you and I have something to chat about, Nightcat.”
The cat growled and hissed at her.
“Nope. Not going to intimidate me. And I think we both know that I know who you are.”
Out in the main alley a brilliant blue glow burst and then all went dark. Kizzy rushed out to see Bron standing over the fallen harpie, blade in hand. His biceps pulsed with frenzied energy. At his feet a pile of dark feathers glowed with red embers. He turned to her, noted the cat and tilted a wondering gaze at her.
“Grab the box,” she said. “I know an empty warehouse just down the street we might be able to get into.”
Five minutes later they wandered through a dark abandoned brick building. The structure had served many a purpose over the decades, from flour mill to phone warehouse to furniture storage, and now its dusty walls were slated to be demolished in favor of putting up a mini-mall featuring Starbucks or some such.
Squirming cat still held firmly, Kizzy navigated the barren darkness. A few wood pallets, a metal folding chair and some huge wooden spools that may have once held telephone line were scattered across the room. On one wall, the industrial glass block windows toward the top had been punched out with an instrument stronger than a fist. The sun had set, and the moon was high and nearly full. It beamed in enough light to see without tripping across scattered two-by-fours.
“Is it the night before the full moon?” she asked Bron as he eyed the cat curiously.
“Tomorrow,” he muttered. “You think that’s Nightcat?”
“He was too curious about us not to be.”
“Aren’t cats curious by nature?”
The feline hissed at him, and Kizzy felt its forearms tense as it flexed its claws. She still had a good hold on it but knew if she loosened her grip the cat could reduce her to a mangled, bloody mess in a matter of seconds.
“I can’t let it go. It’ll run. Or worse, fillet me.” She spoke to the cat. “We want to talk to you. And I’m not letting you go until we do.”
Setting down the box, Bron tugged off his belt and fashioned a collar about the cat’s neck, pulling it tightly but not so much it would choke it. He didn’t fix the prong in a hole, though. “If it shifts, it’ll need the release to expand. Set it down.”
She set down the cat and held the end of the belt. The cat twisted and struggled against the confinement. She knew how cats could be willful and sneaky. And she wasn’t going to give this one leeway.
“What if it’s just a cat?” Bron squatted before the beast. A talon slash across his cheek bled, but he ignored the wound.
“It’s not. I have a feeling about this one. Are you okay?”
“Great.” He nodded. “Why?”
“You’re bleeding.”
He touched his cheek and as he did so, Kizzy saw, when he wiped away the blood, the skin beneath was not open or torn. “Do you heal that quickly?”
He nodded. “A nice advantage when battling harpies.”
The cat again hissed at Bron.
“I think it’s got a feeling about you,” she said.
Bron growled lowly, and the cat’s ears folded back, its body shrinking into submissive behavior.
“Maybe if you shift to wolf shape it’ll shift to human form out of fear?�
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Bron eyed the cat, then leaned in closer and growled again, following by a low whining that didn’t sound so much wounded as warning.
All of a sudden the cat’s body flexed and flipped, the movement tugging the belt from Kizzy’s grasp. Its paws scraped the air, and it began to shimmer. In the next few seconds it grew larger, and the fur slipped away to reveal human skin and hair and fingers and legs and...
“Whoa, he’s going to need some pants,” she said as the full-size human male shuffled away from Bron. He crouched near a wide steel beam on the shadowed side. Tugging at the loose belt about his neck, he tossed it aside, then clasped his hands about his legs to protect his privates.
“Haven’t got any clothes,” Bron said. “Maybe he’ll be inspired to talk fast so he can shift back and get the hell out of here, eh?” He walked over to the shifted cat and stood over him. “You Nightcat?”
“Yes.” The man bowed his head. “Don’t hurt me, man. I am not comfortable around your sort.”
“My sort.” Bron chuffed out a quiet chuckle. “Why do you think it’s okay to broadcast this woman’s location for any insane paranormal to go after her and try to rip out her heart?”
“I...I have to. The soul bringer makes me. He says it’ll wear you two out. Make you crawl to him.”
Kizzy noted Bron’s clenched fists. She didn’t want him to hurt the guy but sensed he was not averse to violence. Nightcat seemed harmless; he cowered before Bron. She almost felt compelled to lean over and pat him reassuringly on the thick thatch of black hair on his head. Almost.
“He put a spell on you?” Bron asked.
The cat shook his head. “Not that I know of.”
“Then stop Twittering or whatever it is you do.”
“The soul bringer will kill me if I don’t help him.”
Bron gripped the cat’s hair and jerked his head backward. “It’s either that or I kill you.” He released him roughly. “I’m trying to protect this woman, and you are making it difficult. Way I look at it, I get rid of you, the problem is solved.”
“You’ll still have the soul bringer on your ass.” The cat sniffed the air. “What’s in the box?”